External resources relating to Equipment, training and tactics

Over the last four decades, there have been many in working class mining villages, in black and Asian communities, amongst numerous protest movements and in the north of Ireland who would profoundly disagree. Nevertheless, it is a comforting and prevailing fiction – even if it is hard to reconcile with the fact the police in this country are apparently in a permanent state of war.

Police lab work has revealed a that a strange fragment lodged in the eye of an Independence Day demonstrator came from a round of a riot gun used by law enforcement for crowd control. According to the daily Helsingin Sanomat, the fragment entered the man’s eye although police say that officers targeted protesters’ legs when they discharged the weapons.

Firearms officers called to tackle terrorist gunmen have been ordered to ignore the injured and dying in the event of a UK attack and instead race towards the threat to try to minimise the total number of casualties in such a situation, a police chief has said.

Since the terror attacks in Paris last month, which claimed 130 lives, British police have been urgently reviewing their tactics. Police chiefs are trying to reassure the government and the public that they could deal with such an event, where multiple targets are hit by a team of terrorists targeting civilians with automatic weapons.

Pat Gallan, Metropolitan police assistant commissioner for special crime and operations, said armed officers had been told to ignore the wounded, even if that included their colleagues, and prioritise arresting or shooting the armed terrorists...

The use of riot control agents (RCAs) as a method of warfare is prohibited under the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). The Convention, however, permits the employment of such chemicals for law enforcement including domestic riot control purposes, provided they are used in “types and quantities” consistent with such purposes.

Whilst CWC States Parties are prohibited from developing RCA munitions for use in armed conflict, they may manufacture, acquire and utilise delivery systems to disseminate appropriate “types and quantities” of RCAs for law enforcement. However, there is continuing ambiguity as to the nature and specifications of those means of delivery that are prohibited under the Convention. This ambiguity has potentially dangerous consequences, allowing divergent interpretations, policy and practice amongst States Parties to emerge.

Of particular concern – given the current research and development of unmanned systems - are the implications for the regulation of “remote control” RCA means of delivery. These are dissemination mechanisms incorporating automatic or semi-automatic systems where the operator is directing operation of the platform and/or RCA delivery device at a distance from the target. Certain “remote control” devices incorporate target activated mechanisms triggering automatic RCA dispersal, without realtime operational control, whilst others employ a “man in the loop” system, requiring human authorisation before the RCA is released.

This report highlights the ongoing development, testing, production and promotion by a range of State and commercial entities of a wide variety of “remote control” RCA means of delivery including: indoor fixed installation RCA dispersion devices; external area clearing or area denial devices; automatic grenade launchers; multiple munition launchers; delivery mechanisms on unmanned ground vehicles and unmanned aerial vehicles.

The Metropolitan police commissioner wants to increase the number of armed officers in London in the wake of the Paris attacks.

Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe said he expected to have to lose 5,000 of the capital’s 32,000 officers to cope with cuts likely to total £800m over four years after the spending review this month.

But he tried to reassure Londoners that the number of firearms officers was being reviewed as a result of the attacks in the French capital, in which 129 people were killed. He said the Metropolitan police was proud to be a mostly unarmed force, but the Paris attacks showed the need for change.

This infographic uses news stories from September and October 2015 to highlight key examples of excessive use of force by Israeli soldiers and police against Palestinians in the latest escalations across the OPT.

Israeli forces have carried out a series of unlawful killings of Palestinians using intentional lethal force without justification, said Amnesty International today, based on the findings of an ongoing research trip to the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. 

Universities and colleges are searching for ways to keep their students safe from violence, but excessive military equipment for police is not the answer...
 

(Jerusalem) – Israeli forces shot and wounded a research assistant working for Human Rights Watch on October 6, 2015, as she was observing a demonstration outside Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.

She was observing the conduct of demonstrators and security forces, in the context of the current escalation in violence that began with the shooting death of an Israeli couple October 1. At least seven protesters were wounded at the same demonstration.

(Jerusalem) – Israeli security forces apparently shot to death a Palestinian boy during a demonstration near the West Bank town of Bethlehem on October 5, 2015. The shooting raises concerns about the excessive use of lethal force by security forces.  

Security forces opened fire at the demonstration, striking 13-year-old Abd al-Rahman Shadi Mustafa Abdallah in the chest with a live bullet, the Palestinian Ministry of Health said. A statement from the Aida Refugee camp where Abdallah lived said he was returning home from school when he was shot, still wearing his school backpack.

It is not unusual to see youth from the Aida refugee camp in Bethlehem fight with the Israeli forces of occupation. But the clashes which followed Israel’s slaying of 13-year-old Abdulrahman Shadi Obeidallah — or Abdo, as he was affectionately known — were among the fiercest that residents have seen in recent years.

For hours after Abdo’s funeral procession on Tuesday, anyone entering the camp had to wade through clouds of tear gas that had been fired by Israeli soldiers. Young locals, many of whom knew Abdo personally, could be seen gathering rocks and tires in preparation for another riot.

BETHLEHEM (Ma'an) -- Israeli doctors on Wednesday were deciding whether to amputate the leg of 13-year-old Issa Ahmad Adnan al-Muti after he was severely wounded by Israeli forces last week, a hospital spokesperson said.

Israel’s security forces will have greater latitude to use live ammunition against Palestinians throwing stones and firebombs – including against minors – as part of a tough new series of measures pushed through by the prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu.

Under the new rules, approved unanimously by the security cabinet on Thursday night, police and soldiers will be able to fire .22 calibre live rounds from Ruger rifles when they judge that not only their own lives are in danger but also those of civilians.

The soldiers overreacted to an incident that could have ended without casualties. The establishment automatically backs them up.

The International Institute of Strategic Studies earlier this year called Mexico the third most deadly conflict in the world. While the war is purportedly between the state and drug traffickers, Mexican police, military and civilian institutions are deeply involved in protecting drug trafficking organizations, and many of those killed, tortured, or disappeared are Mexican and Central American families who have nothing to do with the drugs trade. European and U.S. governments and arms producers are well aware of the Mexican government’s involvement in widespread abuses, which is well documented, but the weapons kept flowing...

A short time ago this evening, the Security Cabinet unanimously approved a series of decisions submitted by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the framework of the fight against rock-throwing in Jerusalem...

Meet the Israeli company that has a contract with the Organizing Olympic Committee for the 2016 Games in Rio / Conheça a empresa israelense que tem um contrato com o Comitê Organizador dos Jogos 2016 no Rio. [En/Pt]

On August 27, the new Australian Border Force (ABF) put out a press release explaining that, as part of something called Operation Fortitude, ABF officials would be stopping passers-by in inner-city Melbourne and demanding to see their visas...

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has announced the start of construction of a fence along Israel's border with Jordan after calls for Tel Aviv to take in Syrian refugees.

Netanyahu said on Sunday that he would not allow Israel to be "submerged by a wave of illegal migrants and terrorist activists".

"Israel is not indifferent to the human tragedy of Syrian and African refugees... but Israel is a small country, very small, without demographic or geographic depth. That is why we must control our borders", he said at the weekly cabinet meeting according to his office...

Police in Hungary used tear gas on refugees trying to cross into the country from Serbia on Wednesday — the latest in several recent incidents in which member states of the European Union used force against asylum seekers, in what experts say may be a violation of international law.

Hungarian politicians resolved to send mounted police, dogs and even helicopters to the area in order to stem the tide of refugees pouring in each day, mostly from Syria, Afghanistan and Eritrea. Government spokesman Zoltan Kovacs said the lawmakers would debate a possible military deployment next week.

Hungary is not the only European country to turn its refugee crisis into a law-enforcement issue...

(Ramallah) – The evidence in an Israeli colonel’s fatal shooting of a Palestinian boy on July 3, 2015, indicates that the shooting violated international standards on the use of lethal force in policing, and possibly also Israel’s own open-fire regulations. A recently released video supports witness accounts and forensic evidence that Col. Israel Shomer killed Mohammad al-Kasbeh, 17, while al-Kasbeh was fleeing, apparently contradicting the military’s initial statement exonerating the colonel on the grounds that he faced a “mortal danger.”

Over a dozen suspected criminals died during a massive anti-crime police operation carried out in various parts of Venezuela, raising troubling questions over who is holding security personnel accountable for the excessive use of force...

Police will be forced to adopt a “paramilitary” style of enforcement if the government inflicts big budget cuts on them, the head of the police officers’ organisation has warned.

Steve White, chair of the Police Federation, said his 123,000 members, from police constables to inspectors, fear a move towards a more violent style of policing as they try to keep law and order with even fewer officers than now.

White told the Guardian that more cuts would be devastating: “You get a style of policing where the first options are teargas, rubber bullets and water cannon, which are the last options in the UK.”

Israeli riot police have fired stun grenades and water cannon on thousands of ethnic Ethiopian Jewish citizens in an attempt to clear one of the most violent protests in memory in the heart of Tel Aviv.

The protesters, Israeli Jews of Ethiopian origin, were demonstrating on Sunday against what they said was police racism and brutality after a video clip emerged last week showing policemen shoving and punching a black soldier.